Wreckpiece

 

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Copyright © text & image 2022 by George Taylor.  All rights reserved.

Wreckpiece

Metal, dowel rods, cardboard and acrylic on canvas in deep, white painted timber frame

64cms x 64cms

2022

The coast of the British Isles is littered with shipwrecks of almost every type, and the coast of Cornwall because of its location and topography, inevitably has its fair share.

Although born in Devonport, the untutored painter Alfred Wallis is often considered as ‘Cornish,’ as for most of his life he lived in St Ives, the fact that he lived in St Ives was fortuitous, as it was there in 1928 that the painters Ben Nicholson and Cristopher Wood ‘discovered’ him – had he been living elsewhere, it is quite possible that he might have remained unknown.

His various paintings on the theme of the Wreck of the Alba, graphically depict that eponymous steam propelled vessel as it was quite literally being overwhelmed by massive waves at Porthmeor Beach on 31^st January 1938. Despite the valiant efforts of the St Ives lifeboat, which itself capsized and was washed on to the rocks, five members of Alba’s crew were lost. Most of the remains of the vessel have been washed away, but the boiler is still discernible at exceptionally low tides.

Vastly different, from Wallis’ powerful and expressive painterly recollections of an event, the aftermath of which, he almost certainly witnessed, are the incisive, mostly black and white photographs of wrecks of mainly, but not exclusively, sailing craft around the coast of Devon and Cornwall taken since 1869 by successive generations of the Gibson family of the Scilly Isles.

Wreckpiece, is different again, and although essentially an abstraction, allows for an imaginative response in the viewer, the various elements of its composition perhaps ‘standing in’ for objects, rather than imitating them in meticulous detail. The piece of found, weathered metal, for example, is visually interesting and plays a key part in the composition, but at the same time may serve to represent a piece of marine wreckage – possibly a remnant of a boiler, or a prow and the broken cylinder, possibly a funnel.

The intersecting rods are essentially an abstract, sculptural construct, serving to hold the image firmly in place, but may also serve as co-ordinates, indicating the location of a shipwreck.

 

George Taylor

April 2022

Rain, Sea and Wind

 

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Copyright © text & images 2021 by George Taylor.  All rights reserved.

Rain, Sea and Wind

Pastel, Pencil and Acrylic on Board

This mixed media painting emanated from the extensive series of works I made for my ‘Flamborough Series’ in the late ‘eighties. I had spent a considerable amount of time exploring and experiencing the coastal landscape around Flamborough Head in preparation for an exhibition organised by the former Humberside County Council in 1991. The exhibition took place at two venues, the gallery at Bridlington Library and fittingly, at Flamborough Library.

(Since 1996 Flamborough Head has been administratively within the remit of the East Riding of Yorkshire Council)

I deliberately made the subjects comprising most of the pictures recognisable as distinctive features of this incredibly visually stimulating coastal landscape, as in 'Eve Rock'. But some of the pieces, I later reworked to emphasise, not so much, the distinctive physical topography, but the all-consuming impact of the immersive coastal weather, the dramatic light and the complexity of seabird flight that I had experienced during my walks amongst and around that remarkably singular coastal location. ‘Rain, Sea and Wind’ was one of these reworked pieces, as was ‘White Rock’.

Eve Rock
Pastel and Pencil on Board

White Rock
Pastel, Pencil and Acrylic on Board

I had also walked the coast path to observe the Old Harry Rocks formation in Dorset, and had taken a boat from Swanage to view these stunning, naturally sculpted rock formations from the sea and course, the well known Needles outcrop off the Isle of Wight, which is punctuated by the red and white banded, man made lighthouse, like a full stop, whereas the lighthouse at Flamborough is set back on the headland.

These formations are mainland chalk promontories, but on the west coast of Scotland we had driven across Mull, taken the ferry from Fionnphort to Iona, and then on by small boat to Staffa, as it happened, in spectacular, squally weather conditions, to experience at first hand the approach to that small, remote island, up to and into the imposing Fingal’s Cave, with its architectonic hexagonal volcanically formed basalt columns. This small landmass was possibly, long ago in geological time, a part of a much larger island which included Mull and Iona.

There is something intensely dramatic about approaching these massive geological configurations, formed by the erosive action of wind and wave over countless millennia, from the seaward aspect, but Flamborough Head offered such a wide range of visual interpretations, that I decided to make most of the topographical paintings from the landward view, but sometimes, also from the shore margins between tides.

George Taylor

August 2021

Spacestorm

 

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Copyright © text 2021 & image 2016 by George Taylor.  All rights reserved.

Spacestorm

2016, Mixed Media on Board

Size 25cms x 44cms, including frame 50cms x 68.5cms. 

This painting employs a variety of mixed media techniques to visually describe the spatial dynamics of an incoming coastal storm and the relative insignificance of humans in relation to such powerful natural forces.
I have physically experienced many such coastal storms, especially when researching my 'Flamborough Series' in the very early 'eighties, but a particularly dramatic and thus, memorable instance took place on the North Cornish Coast at Portreath in the 1970's and was essentially the source for this picture.

Given this, it is not difficult to understand why Turner felt he had to lash himself bodily to a ship's mast in order to gain the direct experience necessary to paint 'Snow -Storm, Steam-Boat off a Harbour Mouth'.
In such circumstances, the portrayal of detail is futile, as the experience is all-consuming and overwhelming - only the controlled energy of expressionism will serve the purpose.

George Taylor
February 2021

Seasurge Penwith

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Copyright © text 2020 & images 2020 & 2009 by George Taylor.  All rights reserved.

This work is a three-dimensional visual composite of several locations on the Penwith coast where the tidal surges interact dynamically and dramatically with the hard, geological landscape.

At Gwennap Head, for example, the red and the black and white navigation markers, appear incongruous in the natural landscape and have a strange, other-worldly feel, rather like the surreal, geometric sculptural objects in some of the paintings of Paul Nash, or of Giorgio De Chirico. 

However, to describe these artefacts literally in a piece such as this would not be apposite, as the work is about extreme movement, colour and physical energy, so perhaps in the disorienting maelstrom of a coastal storm, the red cone becomes less distinct and more blurred.

My painting from 2009, titled Wild Sea Rising, (in Gallery 1 of my web site) is concerned with the natural power and uncontrollable force of the ocean expressed in a painterly expressionistic manner, whilst in Seasurge Penwith the interaction between water, wind and coast is described using three dimensional materials.

Wild Sea Rising by George Taylor

In his work, the late Cornish-born painter Peter Lanyon, often depicts a complex version of landscape from multiple angles, rather than from the conventional single ‘window’ viewpoint, thus the image becomes an all-encompassing expression of experience, albeit in two dimensions. Lanyon also made three-dimensional constructions in order to translate into visual terms complex phenomenological interaction.


George Taylor

December 2020